ARTICLES ABOUT VILLANOVA BY DATE - PAGE 3

ON PAPER, maybe Villanova wasn't the team to beat, despite the fact that it had won the event the previous three Aprils. But when it's the Penn Relays, the Wildcats should almost always be considered a serious factor. Just because. Even without anchor Emily Lipari, the meet's Outstanding Women's Athlete the last two years. Turns out it didn't matter, as the Wildcat women again took the Championship of America Distance Medley, the opening day's marquee race at Franklin Field. This time it was senior Stephanie Schappert who ran the closing 1,600 meters.

VILLANOVA'S basketball program has effectively landed its second recruit for the class of 2016. Eric Paschall, a 6-6 swing man from Fordham who was the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Year this past season, is transferring to the Main Line. He must sit out next season and will then have three years of eligibility remaining. The Wildcats earlier received an oral commitment from Amari Spellman, a junior at The MacDuffie School in Granby, Mass., who's considered among the nation's top power forward prospects.

VILLANOVA'S football team lost three times last season, by a total of five points. Quarterback John Robertson won the Walter Payton Award as the Outstanding Offensive Player in FCS. Linebacker Don Cherry finished second in the voting for the Buck Buchanan Award, which goes to the top defensive guy. Both are now seniors. If Robertson hadn't suffered a concussion in their first playoff game and missed the quarterfinals, which the Wildcats lost by three to Sam Houston State at home, they might have made a serious run at their second national title in 6 years.

The old cinder track at Franklin Field, where Tom Sullivan and his Villanova teammates set the Penn Relays record in the two-mile relay in 1965, is long gone. But for Sullivan, so much about the carnival remains the same. "Sometimes the past is not the past," said Sullivan, 72, whose relay team will be inducted this weekend on the Penn Relays Wall of Fame. "All of us have run around the same buildings there on campus. We all came in through the bullpen and huddled there for five or 10 or 15 minutes before our race, all along the wall.

AS 70-DEGREE weather finally arrives and area college students make the change from North Face jackets to Vineyard Vines shorts for the sunny end of the semester, a group of Villanova sophomores is bypassing the usual limp to the school year's finish line and doing something meaningful for those who serve their country. Jack McDonald's idea for the GI Tickets Foundation came about in the summer of 2011 in his native New Providence, N.J. McDonald, a sophomore accounting major, was caddying at a golf course for a Vietnam veteran whose son was serving in the armed forces and on his way back to the United States.

FOR VILLANOVA, there can never be any excuses at the Penn Relays. That's just the way it is. Comes with all the tradition. "It's always tough for us," Wildcats men's coach Marcus O'Sullivan said. "Other than us, everybody else can take a year off when they're not ready to race. We can't. That's one of the things we talk about a lot. Some years, when we're not ready, that's what we live with. " Fortunately for him, this is not one of those Aprils. He thinks his team is as deep as it's ever been in his 17 seasons.

DOESN'T THIS guy ever rest? Yesterday, Joe Lunardi, the nation's premier bracketologist, posted an early look at next year's NCAA Tournament pairings on ESPN.com. And guess what? Jay Wright's Villanova Wildcats are back as a top seed, this time in the West Region, while Fran Dunphy's Temple Owls are listed as an 11 in the Midwest. And, oh yeah, Lunardi has Lehigh in a play-in game. Two teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference are also No. 1 seeds, but neither is named Duke.

Dylan Ennis wanted a chance to be the prototypical point guard on the basketball court and realized that particular role really doesn't exist the way Villanova runs its offense. So Ennis, who started all 36 games this past season for the Big East champion Wildcats, is saying good-bye to the Wildcats after he graduates next month. He will spend his final year of eligibility next season as a postgraduate student in a program that he hopes will allow him to run the offense and set up his teammates.

VILLANOVA SENIORS Darrun Hilliard and JayVaughn Pinkston and Temple senior Will Cummings were chosen to play tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. in the Reese's Division I College All-Star Game, part of the NCAA Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. All three will play for the East squad. Hilliard, who led the Wildcats at 14.3 points a game, was named Big 5 Player of the Year this season. Cummings, who led the Owls in scoring (14.8), was named to the Big 5 first team, while Pinkston was named to the second team.

FOR THE second time this week, one of the city's basketball players has decided to take advantage of the NCAA rule that allows them to transfer and be immediately eligible to play their final season because they've graduated on time. First it was Drexel's Damion Lee. Now it's Villanova's fourth-year junior guard Dylan Ennis, who averaged 9.9 points for a team that went 33-3. Ennis, who will get his communications degree in May, transferred to the Main Line 3 years ago after playing as a freshman at Rice and had to sit out in 2012-13.